


Cuckoos in the Nest

by Night-Mare (Aoife)



Series: Cradle 'verse [4]
Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Flame Active Character(s), Gen, Shamal is Bianchi's Father, Shamal is Hayato's Father, Side Story, Unconventional Uses for Dying Will Flames
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-10-26 14:14:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10788357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aoife/pseuds/Night-Mare
Summary: Background fic forThe Hand That Rocks the Cradle Rules the World; Shamal, parenthood and Bianchi and Hayato's misadventures.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Hand That Rocks the Cradle Rules the World](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10607250) by [Night-Mare (Aoife)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aoife/pseuds/Night-Mare). 



He probably should feel a little guilty about managing to leave two cuckoos in a Don's nest, but given the way the man treats his womenfolk, the fact that he managed to do just that is more amusing than anything. He just doesn't realise that he has, until he has to treat the younger for poisoning by the elder though. (He uses one of his mosquitos to render the man impotent for that little stunt; the proper response to a child manifesting the ability to use poison cooking is training, and a long hard look at your ability to raise children - not getting the child in question to poison their sibling!)

The problem is that he's got the reputation but not the backing to do anything about it; Hayato doesn't even legally exist and even if he exposed Bianchi's parentage, she was still a viable heir - and female bastards were treated worse than male ones. Telling anyone was a recipe for them all ending up dead. So he doesn't. He sticks around, even though he's a lousy role model; teaches Bianchi to control her poison cooking (mostly resolve; if she cooks while emotional, it leaks into her food), repairs the damage to Hayato's system and shows him how to check his food for poisons.

He even ends up teaching Hayato how to use his secondary weapon; the kid had been begging to learn how to use the Mosquitos, but even now he could tell that he wasn't a Mist, and they were Mist constructs. He probably should feel fairly guilty about showing an eight year old how to blow shit up - especially as eventually the kid was going to use that skill on his 'father', but the kid has enough Lightning that he's not particularly worried about Hayato killing himself. And all Mafia heirs need a signature weapon.

He doesn't like the fact that everyone assumes he's their Familiga's doctor; Familigia doctors are too often targets and he walks away for a while, confident that the kids will survive in his absence. They're strong, and they're fast and they both have claws and fangs they can use, and he needs to reassert his independence. He cuts a swathe thorough the available contracts, re-establishing himself as one of the foremost assassins-for-hire in the Underground. He even talks to Reborn; the cursed not-toddler is a troll, currently delighting in the torture of Dino Cavallone, but he's one of the best at tutoring Flame Users he's aware of.

Reputation is everything in the Underground; and that's why he's there when Bianchi kills for the first time. Female hitman are rare; ones in their early adolescence, with G's pink hair and the fucked up combination of Mist and Storm Flames required for poison cooking, unique. He considers it his paternal duty to watch, to be standing by to pick her up if she falls - the lifestyle is a hard one, but if she wants it, he'd give his kids the sun, moon and stars.

He can't help but be proud when she earns her Name; there's nothing formal about doing so, but the first time he hears someone refer to a job he knows she's taken as "the Poison Scorpion's handiwork," he knows the Name will stick - and that his daughter will be just fine. Even if she does add 'ex-boyfriends' to her body count a little more often than he'd prefer; isn't it the father's role to kill the bastards off?

And damnit, his son had taken his lessons to heart; he successfully dumps his bodyguards and goes to ground, having left a note 'disowning' himself. And is pissed off; it takes him the best part of a month to hunt Hayato down, and he gets dynamite thrown at him for his troubles. He was going to kill someone when he found out why his boy had run. Whatever had triggered it had to be fairly bad - and trying to figure that out had meant he was distracted enough for Bianchi's first or second attempts on Dino Cavallone's life not to register. He turns his back on her for six weeks, and all hell breaks loose. What had he done to deserve this?

By the time he manages to coral and calm Hayato enough that he's fairly sure the kid won't run again if he leaves him alone for more than a visit to the bathroom (and he even resists the temptation to use one of his mosquitos on the kid, if only because the fact that he appears to have gone Flame Active registers, belatedly), Bianchi's been missing for several days.

In hindsight, his storming the Cavallone Estate probably wasn't the best idea he'd ever had, but at some point in the last few years she'd wiggled his way into his heart, and not knowing where she was, was killing him.

When he finds out that she's alive, and in the Varia Compound, training with the dubiously sane lunatics that made up that company, he was fairly sure it showed on his face, because the Sky in front of him looked like a sheepish little boy for a handful of moments, before reminding him that he was the one who "owned" the Varia, and that she was perfectly safe. And there were very few people she could accidental hurt there - unlike here on his main estate.

That, and getting to see Bianchi in the Compound, sparring with the Rain of the Sky beside him, smiling, really smiling for the first time in a long time is what makes him beg Dino to take Hayato in; at least as a Don in his own right Hayato's father won't be able to demand his son back from Dino immediately, and if his kid would have Reborn as a tutor, that's only a bonus. Dino agrees; and the price? That isn't so bad. One no questions asked healing, with none of his normal fuss about treating men? He can do that for his kids.


	2. Chapter 2

For all that Dino would have let him off the bargain they'd struck with Nana's healing, he could see in the teen's eyes that this wasn't the patient his host had meant when he'd bargained for a healing. And the state of the Young Lion's wife when she's delivered into his hands - well he's a shameless Ladies' Man, but he has his standards. He might chase, but the women who fell into bed with him did so entirely of their own free will.

Putting Nana Sawada back together is a challenge worthy of his skill. He can see the shadow of the vivacious woman she'd been, and she was very attractive to him - not that he wanted to go there, but he couldn't deny it. (The way her little fluffy Sky son had looked at him when Dino had introduced him as a doctor, the kid's desire to have his mom back had nothing to do with it. Nor did the fact that his son was part of the Sky's 'set' influence him. He'd deny that to the day he died.)

He's startled when a wild-eyed Dino drags him out of bed, and cites their deal. Reborn is already working on a limp and partially frozen body and he recognises Xanxus di Vongola. He understands better why Dino was so willing to make the bargain, now. (He hugs Bianchi and Hayato so hard when they have Xanxus stable. Not either of them understand why, but he bought their freedom from their father at a price he hadn't realised and he doesn't regret it.)

He does nearly refuse to help when Dino's Rain dumped Tsuyoshi Yamamoto on him, but the man has the same pattern of damage, the same evidence of an out of control Sky, and he's helped with Xanxus di Vongola. His eyes narrow, and well, he can experiment on Tsuyoshi to help Nana. Tsuyoshi knows about Flames, knows what his should feel like, whereas Nana was never allowed to use hers.

(That Hayato likes Takeshi, and Takeshi is Tsuna's Rain doesn't influence his decision at all.)

It's that lack of regret, that realisation that Dino was something out of the ordinary among the Dons - the way he was so careful with Bianchi, and guarded Tsuna and Hayato and Takeshi, and refused to accept Federico di Vongola's behaviour - that leads him to realise he's sliding into a bond with Dino. He _nearly_ runs.

Except that Hayato and Tsuna are stolen away, and Dino's rage seeps into his bones and he knows better now, why everyone fears a bonded Sky. Dino is as dangerous as he is, for all that he hides it behind a mask. It's not so strange; an assassin drawing other assassins, but that he had fooled even him? It's exhilarating storming the Estraneo compound in the grasp of his Sky's Rage.

He still wishes it hadn't happened, but riding that Rage, alongside his Sky and his daughter explains to him the rest of the reason Dino and Xanxus are so angry with Iemitsu and Timoteo. He's tasted the protective Rage of a Sky defending a younger Sky, one that looked to him for protection, and for that Rage not to manifest in either of the older men? There's something _broken_. And it's not something he could fix.

(His daughter and Xanxus di Vongola flirting is something he could have done without walking in on. Especially given that their flirting was at least one-third sincere attempts to kill each other. It does make watching Nana and Tsuyoshi circle each other less painful, and more amusing though.)


	3. Chapter 3

What he should have expected was that even with Dino's help, there was only so long he was keeping his kids away from their 'legal' father. Especially with Tsuna's accession to being the Vongola Decimo-in-waiting; but even if he had expected it, he wouldn't have expected the man to be as flamingly stupid as he was. Hayato responded in exactly the right way though; both he and Bianchi agreed. His Sky is not amused by the way that two of his Guardians congratulate Hayato for doing so, but honestly? He doesn't care.

Wearing one of the Mare Rings - goddamn fabled pieces of jewellery - he doesn't understand how Dino Cavallone can wear his all of the time. Not when if he falls asleep wearing it, he dreams of worlds where he didn't know that his kids were his, where he chased Bianchi for kisses and couldn't get through to Hayato without the Bastard's help. It takes him a while to realise what's causing the nightmares, and by the time he does, he's so jittery that he doesn't notice Tsuyoshi and Nana are plotting.

(The two of them having timing. They pick the first night he's thought to take the Ring off, and it means he sleeps through their antics until they think to wake him up. And that's one hell of a way to deal with his nightmares; he suspects it's one of the reasons he didn't even think to object.)

It's later that month, that he gets caught up in his Sky's Rage again, and surrenders to it; he doesn't come up again until Iemitsu Sawada is dead, and he's kind of relieved he'd succumbed, because if he hadn't he'd have tried to go up against the Bastard on his own, and that would have gotten him dead.

And it would have left the others struggling to save his son, and Tsuna's Mist from the Bastard's zero-point ice. He shudders still at the memory; he's almost tempted to leave the Mist Mare Ring on, to see if that had happened in the other places it shows him, but Nana peels it off him whenever she sees it still on his finger. The temptation fades, eventually. It takes a while, though the realisation he's going to be a father - again - helps. It gives him something else to focus on, the fact that he gets to be there from the start this time.

The dreadful duo - his baby daughter and Tsuyoshi's - are adorable. He didn't think they would be, had expected to find little tiny babies boring, and smelly and dull, and he still - despite Hayato and Bianchi - doesn't think of himself as father material, had expected to need to lean on Tsuyoshi and Nana, but. He takes to it like a duck to water, though, and ends up playing the house-husband for a while. The bond between the three of them, means that Nana ends up borrowing the Mist Mare Ring and he watches in amusement as she and his eldest daughter take the Flame Mafia by storm after Tsuna's ascension.


End file.
